Tennessee's cross country squad joins a field of 31 of the nation's elite teams for the NCAA Championships

Nov. 16, 2001

Tennessee's cross country
squad joins a field of 31 of the nation's elite teams for the NCAA Championships
in Greenville, S.C., Monday. The Volunteers take to the 10K Furman University
Golf Course for their last meet of the season. Tennessee competes as a team for
the first time at the NCAA Championships since 1998.

"We are excited and
honored to be competing in the NCAA Cross Country Championships," cross
country coach George Watts said. "This team has worked hard and earned
the right to compete. We have run our best races during the championship part
of the season, and I expect the same this meet. In terms of strategy, it is
more important than ever that we concern ourselves with our race plan and individual
efforts. Often in this race the team that runs within themselves will have a
positive outcome. As always, we hope to improve from the last race and finish
the season on a high note."

"I am excited to see
what the future holds for this cross country team, not only at the NCAAs, but
next year," Watts said. "We have our entire team returning, and they
have learned that hard work and goal setting pays off. The experience we gain
this year sets us up well for the future."

While the Vols have strung
together their best races of the season in the last two outings, Tennessee's
only race this year at the Furman University Golf Course, at the Oct. 13 8K
Furman Invitational, resulted in its only non-top-five performance of the year--21st
of 35 teams.

Tennessee's last team
NCAA finals team performance in 1998 produced a 21st-place finish in Lawrence,
Kansas. In 1999, the last time a Vol ran in the NCAAs as an individual, Anthony
Famiglietti started strong but slowed in the stretch to earn 173rd in a field
of 254 in Bloomington, Ind. Tennessee's best finish at the NCAA finals
came in 1972 in Houston, Texas as Doug Brown and company brought the program's
first NCAA title back to Knoxville. Alf Holmberg's (1951) and Brown's
(1972) runner-up NCAA finishes stand as the best in the history of the Tennessee
program at the championship meet.